“Puffing defiance”

Monica Gall is back in Canada a a long sojourn abroad.

Robertson Davies, A Mixture of Frailties (1958).

A Mixture of Frailties is the third novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

This post is for my blogging friend Jim Lowe.

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Schwarzenegger speaks to Russians

You may have already seen the video. I didn’t know until I read a New York Times article this morning that when the video was posted, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Twitter account was one of twenty-two accounts that Vladimir Putin followed.

Schwarzenegger’s talk is a model of ethos, logos, and pathos.

Recently updated

Run DST Experts come out in favor of year-round Standard Time.

Gall and grammar

Mrs. Alfred Gall, Ma Gall, has ideas about grammar:

Robertson Davies, A Mixture of Frailties (1958).

A Mixture of Frailties is the third novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

Related reading
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On Saint Patrick’s Day

[Hi and Lois, March 17, 2022.]

Attaway, Hi-Lo Amalgamated: have Thirsty Thurston, the strip’s resident alcoholic, dress as a leprechaun and offer greetings.

This panel also loses points for Hi’s announcement. Yes, Hi, we see your tie.

Today’s strip worsens in its second panel: “You’re not even Irish,” says Thirsty. (As if Thurston is a recognizably Irish surname?) And Hi replies, “I can still be lucky, can’t I?” What a wag. But don’t you mean “get lucky,” Hi? Uh, no — it’s a family strip. There’s room for alcoholism, but there’ll be no fooling around.

If I may take a place on the Hi-Lo assembly line for a minute, I’d like to offer an idea. First panel: Trixie stares with a puzzled but happy expression. Second panel: we see that she’s staring at a green sunbeam. (Pantone 347 U.) And she thinks, “On Saint Patrick’s Day even sunbeam’s wearing green!” Aww.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

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[The name Leddy is Irish.]

The Braingame

Norm and Dutchy (Yolande) Yarrow are at Waverly University; he in the chaplain’s department, she is an assistant director of recreation. They are giving a party. There has already been one party game, with people tied back to back having to get free. That was Dutchy’s idea. Now another game, suggested by the secretary to the registrar.

Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice (1954).

Good grief. It reminds me of a game of charades from my grad student days. Book title, two words, first word, first syllable, the gesture of pouring. I got it right away: Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Hans-Georg Gadamer. We’d all read it in a seminar. Good grief.

Leaven of Malice is the second novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy.

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Here, there

George Bodmer drew a cartoon: “There is no here, there is no there.”

Dumpsters

I was standing next to an abandoned apartment building, moving the contents of one dumpster to another. At the bottom of the first dumpster was a dinosaur, a brontosaurus, I think, with greenish-pinkish neon skin. It must be dead, I thought. But it bounded out of the dumpster and ran down the avenue. I tried to follow, but it had already disappeared. I figured I should tell someone.

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[Likely sources: watching the news, being stuck behind a garbage truck, seeing a bug on a picture frame and trying to figure out if it was alive. It was.]

Run DST

From NBC News, news that the Senate today approved legislation to make daylight-savings time permanent:

The bill, called The Sunshine Protection Act, was passed by unanimous consent, meaning no senators opposed it. If enacted, the measure would mean Americans no longer need to change their clocks twice a year.

My first thought: moving on this legislation in mid-March gives everyone plenty of time to get ready not to change their clocks in November.

And then I learned that the bill would not take effect until 2023. So there’s at least one more falling back to come.

*

March 17: “Sleep experts say Senate has it wrong: Standard time, not daylight saving, should be permanent” (The Washington Post ). An excerpt, quoting David Neubauer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University:

The current enthusiasm for permanent daylight saving time is “grossly misguided,” said Neubauer, who predicted a return to “the extremely unpopular 1970s dark winter mornings with commuters going to work and children going to school long before sunrise, inevitably leading to injuries and fatalities.”

In a comment on this post, Joe DiBiase recalls going to school carrying a flashlight.

Errors

Edith Little keeps house for Gloster Ridley, editor of the Salterton newspaper, the Evening Bellman. Mr. Ridley thinks of Mrs. Little as Constant Reader, devouring the newspaper by night and giving unsolicited observations on its contents by day. As Mrs. Little explains to Bevill Higgin, teacher of elocution, she reads for errors:

Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice (1954).

Leaven of Malice is the second novel of Davies’s Salterton Trilogy. A prank makes the plot go: a newspaper announcement of a wedding to take place on November 31. November 31, as on this 2009 calendar.

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